Yeah, that was a big deal in the local news here... it was a surprise that it came from Augsburg. They aren't exactly known for scientific breakthroughs. It's the sort of thing that you might expect to hear about from the University of Minnesota but not from the small Lutheran college down the road.

interesting -- but i'd like to know more about what they can use going in. using corn oils still ends up with the large-scale problems that ethanol has. be great if it can use waste oils. think there's work going on at uc berkeley on that.

He doesn't drive his company car privately so hadn't driven it for 3 weeks during x-mas. Barely got it going afterwards, had to jump start it using his private car.

Last week it didn't go faster than 90km/hr, flooring the accelerator. The garage said the particle filter was clogged up and started a 'regeneration program'. He had to drive at least 60km/hr for 20 mins, that would clear the filter.

He got pulled over after 10 minutes, the police car that was 100 meters behind him couldn't see anything because of the white smoke he was producing. He had to had the car towed back.

He's a Mercedes man, got this car when he had the former CEO fired of a company we took over. He'll go back to Mercedes as soon as he can.

I should be studying. There's a new Unix Engineer III position open, and I'm the only man in the State of RI who knows his way around the ODM and ZFS and can tell you the difference between ServiceGuard and HACMP. Our shop is mostly Sun with some Red Hat, and they just brought some pSeries on board for the muscle, running Oracle and a custom in-house app that's a glorified loghost. The old guy quit because he couldn't hack Big Blue boxen. This is stupid, as IBM has some seriously kick-ass articles on how to optimize AIX for Oracle, and Oracle for AIX, and knowing that shit cold will make me a god among geeks.

But, nooooo... my uncle offered to give me a skanky old motorboat, all I need to do is find an outboard for it.

My mistake? I start googling for "reliable outboard motor" and run across a vague mention of a company that went bust in the mid '90s, after producing essentially the exact same motor for 60 years. Being a nerd who should be doing something productive, I run down the reference... and fall completely in love. The motor is a British Seagull - a two-stroke motor that produces somewhere south of one horsepower, but manages to transform that into more than 40lbs of bollard pull, and keep that pull running around the clock. It will run 24/7 for months at a time, with only pauses at six week intervals to tighten every nut, bolt, screw and stud, install a fresh plug, and to wet it with WD-40. There's videos on youtube of B. Seagull motors rescued from rubbish heaps where they've been kept since the late '70s, that run on the first pull after swapping out the plug and magneto. There's a company under the same name that will sell you whatever part you need to get any British Seagull motor since the Great Depression spinning like a top.

Oh, and they powered British landing craft on D-Day. The exact same motor that was sold up until '96. So, I've spent the past few hours(days) researching everything I can on B. Seagull, and know, deep in my heart of hearts, I'm going to get a used Yamaha anyway.

For a week I've been daydreaming about a small 18' shallow draft outboard camper. Sweet little design from Chesapeake Marine with just enough room inside the prow cabin for two births and a head, deep cockpit with port and starboard bench seats, and a built in outboard well with stout prop guards on either side. I could pick up a kit for only $5,000 which would include everything but paint, electrics and an engine. Stitch and glue construction which would make it not only tight and light, but also easy enough for a rank novice like me to slap together. And its been designed from the get go as a simple displacement hull, so 5hp is all I need to get it up to max speed. Turns out this German firm makes a stout little set of electric outboards under the name of Torqueedo. They also sell a set of lithium batteries--again powerful and light. I'd be able to rig up a set of solar panels on the hardtop that sits over the cockpit to trickle charge the batteries on extended trips. Not a boat to take out into the chop, but in mild weather it could take a cozy pair through the North Sound and into the Channel Islands between Vancouver Island and the BC mainland.

British Seagull Lasted so long because they didn't have to be attached to any British electronics to work...

rino – April 05, 2008 07:15AMReplyQuoteIn America, the only respectable form of socialism is socialism for the rich.

mmmm, boating. almost as bad as owning an old house.

I'm jonesin' for a 14' Maritime skiff with a 25hp Johnson. (wish I had a Johnson like that...)
It's brand new and I have no idea the price. Being of frugal mind about most purchases I likely won't buy considering it is a BOAT and will likely price in at 10K + ... oy, I dunno.
New outboard motors price in around 1k per HP conservatively.

We currently use an old, large, heavy MFG fiberglass from the early 70's with a 115HP Johnson 2 stroke from the 80's -- it drinks gas like a Saudi bender. Plus, it's not the greatest platform for fishing.

yeah they are a money pit to be sure, especially if they've got a planing hull like virtually all modern designs. Ah well, I'd have to move back to the coast and that doesn't look likely anytime soon.

re: ancient marine engines
There's this designer in Olympia WA that specializes in stitch n glue construction--Devlin is his name. He penned a little tug for one of his good customers and installed a huge single cylinder two-stroke made by a Norwegian company named SABB. KER-CHUNK KER-CHUNK Redlines at 1800. Uses something called a feathered prop to achieve forward neutral and reverse without having to change rpm. Bizarre little bastard.